Families celebrate New Year's Eve with bubbles

For the Gits family of Naperville, New Year's Eve means bubbles.

The family celebrated the new year at noon Friday at the DuPage Children's Museum's ninth annual Bubble Bash, as part of a crowd of 900 kids and parents.

“This is the normal routine for them. We come here all the time,” Joe Gits said.

His children, Joey, 9, Katie, 7, Kristie, 5, and Abby, 3, made jet packs and colored glow-in-the-dark stars to go along with the event's outer space theme. The girls, all in matching red and black holiday dresses, played with noisemakers in the Naperville museum's “Make it Move” area before the countdown began to the new year — about 12 hours early.

“I know it's a tradition for a lot of families,” Alison Segebarth, the museum's director of marketing and membership, said.

The idea, of course, is to provide a celebration for children who go to sleep long before the year really switches at midnight.

Children such as 8-year-old Tyrus Foss of Park Ridge, whose new year's resolutions include “to make my brother stop chasing me or something.”

Children like 7-year-old Abby Haskell of Naperville, who made her own bubbles with triangle- and star-shaped wands before the museum turned on bubble machines at noon.

And children like 3-year-old Cooper Smith of Naperville, who got into the space theme by wearing an orange astronaut jumpsuit his older brother, Jack, once used as a Halloween costume.

Kids paused their museum play for the new year's countdown, yelled out at noon by Naperville Mayor George Pradel, wearing a festive 2011 crown. Pradel told the crowd to get excited for the new year and Saturday's abbreviated date of 1-1-11, then counted from 10 and yelled “Happy new year!”

Parents put toddlers on their shoulders so the youngsters could pop bubbles that coated the crowd from two machines near the stage, and the wands handed out by museum employees.

The crowd dispersed slowly after the countdown, amid new year's well-wishes, cheers of “ooh bubbles,” and the din of handmade, rocket-shaped noisemakers.

As families left, Pradel stood by the museum's exit, blowing bubbles and wishing everyone a happy new year.